Tom awoke next. He sat up on the sand, astonished to hear the sea so close. Then he remembered all that had happened and leapt to his feet. He awoke the girls and they put on their warm clothes. They saw Andy, and waved to him.
"Andy's getting our dinner!" said Jill. "I suppose you're feeling as hungry as usual, Tom?"
"I could eat a whale!" said Tom, and he really felt as if he could.
It was fun cooking the fish over a fire. It smelt delicious. There was no bread left so the children had to eat the fish by itself, but they were so hungry that they didn't mind at all.
"It's about two o'clock in the afternoon," said Andy, looking at the sun. "Now the first thing to do is to find a good place to sleep for the night. Then we'd better explore the island, if we've time. The food we've got with us won't last a great while, but at any rate we can always get fish—and I expect we'll find some berries we can eat, too."
"Look!" said Tom, suddenly pointing to the pile of things not far off. "There's a gull there. Will he peck our tins open—or eat our cocoa!"
Andy clapped his hands and the gull flew off, crying loudly. "We certainly mustn't leave any food out," said Andy. "The gulls would have it at once. Look—there's two or three fishes left we can have for our supper. We'd better make a hole in the sand and bury them under some heavy stones till we want them. The gulls would soon make a meal of them if we left them uncovered!"
They buried the fish. Andy stood up and looked all round the cliff. "I wonder if there's a cave or anything we could sleep in at night," he said. But there didn't seem to be any cave at all, though the children hunted carefully all along the cliff.
"How will anyone know we are here?" asked Jill. "We shall have to put up some sort of a sign, shan't we, to show any passing ship do steamer that we are here?"
"Yes," said Andy. "I've been thinking about that. I'll take down the ship's sail, and we'll tie it to a tree on the top of the cliff. That will be a fine signal."